CleanMem – Freeware Memory App

A Windows memory cleaner that works – what a novelty!

Software of this type has a bad rap – a lot of them don’t deliver. CleanMem from PCWinTech.com seems to be the exception – one that works. I came across this app noodling around the web and from all I can see, it gets a lot of good press on its efficacy.

Many programs are “memory sloppy” – they take memory and when done, don’t clean it up. Over time this results in using more memory than it needed. CleanMem works by starting up every 30 minutes, cleaning out memory and then closing – it does not run in the background. According to the author:

“A lot of programs do this, they take memory but don’t always cleanup after themselves. Well the API [used in this app] is like a little house cleaning. It removes all safe unused memory. When the process runs the function again the memory is then taken again without any difference in performance to the program because it would do it anyways, it wont reuse the old memory, this is why you see program climb and climb in memory usage as you use them. So why let all the unused memory just sit there?

Here is an example, I loaded of my Age Of Conan game, it was using about 600mb of memory, when I run my Cleanmem the memory only lowers to about 500mb, and the game doesn’t miss a hit, why? because that 500mb of memory was currently being used and windows didn’t touch it, only the memory left over was removed, which isn’t going to touch the games performance since the memory wasn’t in use. This is also why the page file doesn’t grow, cause no memory is being moved away from the process.

Will you see performance increase? Yes if a lot of your memory is being eaten up, plus keeping the processes cleaner adds a small performance increase when dealing with memory. But if you have a butt load of memory like I do you won’t see amazing increases in performance, but if your running low on memory it makes a big difference.”

Based on one user’s test, he concluded:

Frankly speaking, this seemed too good to be true. I am still finding it hard to believe because its not only in the statistics but working on my machine actually feels snappier. Heck whatever it does, it is working for me (and a number of other people on the various forums all over the internet).

I’ve come across other testimonials that attest to its effectiveness so it’s worth a try. I’m using it and so far it seems to make a difference for me. Give it a try and drop a line on how this works, or not, for you.